Lacoste

The runes suggest there's a waft of Andre Courreges' Pop style in the air. Felipe Oliveira Baptista certainly seemed downwind of it with his Fall collection for Lacoste, which made a feature of abbreviated rugby dresses that were ski-suit lean over tights whose side stripes made the silhouette look even leaner. Skiwear was, in fact, one of Baptista's inspirations—specifically, the uniforms Lacoste designed for the French national team in 1966. So there was a sleek downhill aerodynamism to the geometric graphics that helped define the collection. The zips, too: They were a key detail. Sleeves zipped open to create an attenuated cape-like effect, particularly striking in black leather.

But Baptista had also found pictures of a 1930s mountain motoring expedition in Lacoste's archives, so there was a subtle retro theme threading through his mondo moderno. It was most obvious in the menswear, but it also emerged in ski sweaters reconfigured with rows of Lacoste crocodiles, or pieces that were lightly quilted like something you'd see in an old photo, or the long skirts with flared hems. A lattice print was actually a thirties tweed writ large.

What united Baptista's inspirations was his ongoing commitment to the urbanization of Lacoste. The muted color palette—blues, grays, and whites—was concrete and steel. Camel and red accents were classically classy.